To ask you to all sign this petition asking the government to investigate 9,580 benefits-related deaths?

[BowieFan]

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/170364

The excellent Jack Monroe has started a campaign on twitter and has been collating stories of awful experiences with the DWP, Atos, Capita and Maximus. Some of the stories are heartbreaking.

Please, please sign this petition - at the very least, the families of people who died because of the DWP deserve some closure.

Take David Clapson - former soldier who died of hunger and insulin-related shock. He had been sanctioned for being late for an appointment, and couldn't afford to pay for electricity for his fridge to keep his insulin cold. The coroner said his stomach had had no food in it for upwards of three days. Nobody should be dying like that in 2016.

I recommend you check out Jack's twitter (@MxJackMonroe) and read some of the stories using the #HungerHurts hashtag. It's heartbreaking, but we need to confront this.

Re Jack Monroe - her assertions that she let her 3 year old go cold and hungry because she was too proud to ask her well-off parents for a hand-out after leaving her job makes her, in my opinion, an arsehole. She prioritised her bullshit principles over the welfare of her child, and essentially got famous from it.

Re the petition, the system definitely needs to change - there are some glaring flaws and horrific treatment of service users. However, basing a petition on inaccurate figures and its potential to be a celebrity soapbox mean I can't sign this.

Re Jack Monroe - her assertions that she let her 3 year old go cold and hungry because she was too proud to ask her well-off parents for a hand-out after leaving her job makes her, in my opinion, an arsehole. She prioritised her bullshit principles over the welfare of her child, and essentially got famous from it.

We can't know the psycho-dynamics of other people's private relationships and nobody is under an obligation to explain the fine detail of their estrangements or semi-estrangements to satisfy the baying mob.

The face that someone felt unable to ask for help from family despite dire straits and a small child suggests more than pride going on there to me. I don't think it's an area we should be poking with sticks.

Yes, I was just coming on to say that in the UK we have to stop expecting strangers' taxes to pay for our care whether we are single mums or ageing demented oldies or homeless mentally ill.

The money isn't there and we may as well stop berating the gov, nurses, carers, councils, social services etc for not doing enough.

Families have to start taking the responsibility, no it's not nice, and it does usually fall on the females in the family and yes, most people are too busy to do the necessary but the Jack Monroes of this world are barking up the wrong tree.

I'm not saying no support from gov for the most needy but at the mo everyone considers their relative to be the most needy and unfortunately they're not.

If she doesn't want us to make hthat assumption, perhaps she shouldn't have said it to several major media outlets then?

I choose not to endorse the career of someone who has become famous of the back of poverty from which they had other avenues they chose not to take. The dynamics of relationships and estrangement should not take priority over your child being starving and freezing.

Families have to start taking the responsibility, no it's not nice, and it does usually fall on the females in the family and yes, most people are too busy to do the necessary but the Jack Monroes of this world are barking up the wrong tree.

Woah, WHAT?

Misogynistic much? Not to mention full of holes and a charter for abuse.

If she doesn't want us to make hthat assumption, perhaps she shouldn't have said it to several major media outlets then? hmm

If several media outlets ASKED her about something deeply personal and difficult to explain that involved other people what was she going to do but give a brief answer that glossed over the gory details?

I choose not to endorse the career of someone who has become famous of the back of poverty from which they had other avenues they chose not to take. The dynamics of relationships and estrangement should not take priority over your child being starving and freezing.

You don't know that she chose not to take them. It's quite possible that they weren't open to her.

Again, manumission then she shouldn't have openly said that they were.

And I am not talking about being asked questions - you can also include her earlier 'in her own words' columns in the guardian in that.

And the reason I judge harshly is because I found myself at the mercy of the benefits system, and it was hard, and harsh and humiliating, and I hated every second. And although it nearly killed me to do so, I went cap in hand to people that if you'd asked me beforehand, I would rather have died than ask for money, because it was more important than my principles or my emotional wellbeing to be able to put food on the table. And that was just to feed and pay medical bills for myself and the dog, nevermind a toddler!

We are nowhere near a Victorian slum!

I just don't think you can take any of that stuff at face value.

After the media 'discovered' that she had financially comfortable parents out there, there was a question mark there( that there really shouldn't have been) and she was under pressure to 'explain'.

There might have been stuff she never wanted her DS to know.
Things that relatives had said or done.
You just don't know.

And dealing with the mass media isn't like a chat at the kitchen table. When the press get to close to sensitive personal things, their subjects throw a smokescreen up.

I work in the media - I am aware of how it works. The media 'discovered' her financially comfortable background because she talked about it in one of her earliest columns. And her reasons for not asking them for help to feed her son - I believe the terms she used were 'proud and embarrassed'.

Anyway, this is derailing the thread. You can go on thinking she's the saviour of the impoverished, I will go on thinking she's an entitled arse who prioritised her principles over feeding her child, and maybe best if we leave it there.

Where have I said that I think she's the saviour of the impoverished?

We are nowhere near Victorian slums, if the benefit system was that bad people wouldn't actively choose to claim and the would have been no need for caps or limits of children.

As for the petition starter, didn't she quit her job because she choose to have a child? Nobody has to have children, her choices her responsibility.

Signing & Sharing

Im also pretty sickened by some of the ignorant comments on here, whatever you think of the petition organiser, this IS real & something that definitely needs investigating.

I lost a disabled friend to suicide as a direct result of these benefit policies. He was wheelchair bound with MS, suffered with Bipolar & much more. He was called in for a benefit review appointment, I spoke with him afterwards & he seemed very up & positive about the fact that they had decided he was fit for work, as if somehow it magically made him better. He was on an upswing with his bipolar moods & was buzzing about looking for work & all the things he was going to to. I felt VERY uncomfortable with it, because no way was he fit for work.

Next week, when the reality sunk in, he committed suicide.

Another very old friend who has worked all his life lost his job & was struggling to get another, he signed on for benefits for only the second time in his life as he had no choice. He was looking frantically for work, but he was still getting hassle every time he signed on. The young girl he saw, clearly didn't like his cut glass public school boy accent, even mocking him when he spoke & she kept sanctioning him for no reason, insisting he went after jobs that were very much beneath his skill set & wouldn't pay his bills . The last time it happened, he wasn't told his benefits, which were paid directly into a bank account had been stopped.

He naively didn't notice until a couple of months later after he had organised a significant birthday party at his house, buying food, his card was refused & he found out on the day of his party that not only did he have no money, but his savings had gone on dd bills & he was now in the red too, just at a time he had run down his food stores.

He didn't really tell us what had happened until later, I did think it odd that he insisted on not cutting into the large Birthday cake I had made him as a gift. It later turned out that this was pretty much the only food he had for 2 weeks & he eeked it out to last as he was too proud to let his friends know or ask for help. I only found out as he didn't have a clue how the benefit system worked, initially figuring he would tell them to stick it & get a job, though there were no jobs available. I have another friend who works in the benefit system which he remembered & was the reason he came clean to me as he needed help & hoped I could find out for him. He was advised by my other friend to make a complaint as she believed the benefit advisor he saw was deliberately discriminating against him as he was more MC.

Thankfully he wasn't suicidal, but he could well have been, this came on the back of both of his parents dying within a few months of each other & took months to sort out, I have never seen him so down. Thankfully he found work again & hasn't been out of work since as he now works around the country like some sort of nomad, so not ideal as he loves his house & hometown

Like some on here, BAs are prejudice & ignorant too, plus targets to meet, which sadly leads to unfair sanctions & in some cases suicides. I know of 4 others.

This needs to be investigated!

If several LEFT-WING media outlets ASKED her about something deeply personal

'too proud and embarrassed' so its down to the tax payer to look after her

RockingHippy - it absolutely does need investigating, and I am one of the people who don't like Jack Monroe, but I just want to reiterate that isn't my reason for not signing - this petition has, as PPs have said, inaccurate statistics at its core, which can be used as an excuse to dismiss it out of hand.

I am so sorry about your friend.

I don't think anyone is in dispute that some of the sanctions have been wrong.

It's a huge and bloated and complex system.

But I don't think this is the answer.

'too proud and embarrassed' so its down to the tax payer to look after her

Yes

Isnt that why we pay National Insurance & if whoever "she" is has been paying into that pot too, then of course they are entitled if it were my friend ho needed help, I would be happy for them to have Nat Ins I had paid in too

Rocking
Sorry about your friend but your second example makes no sense.
He was sanctioned for not applying for jobs. That's how it works. If he decide he can't possibly lower himself to work at ASDA or Tesco for minimum wage that's his problem. If he's too proud to do work he sees as beneath him then he should be too proud to make use of the safety net people who do those jobs taxes provide. As for not noticing lack of benefit for months.... He obviously had enough money to not even need the benefit for several weeks otherwise he'd have noticed or would have been keeping an eye on his bank very closely. Also, if he didn't take steps to lower his bills nd lifestyle costs when he lost the means to py for it, that's on him too and has no bearing on the DWP, this petition or the Job Centre person, no matter how old they were

What is the issue with Jack? I have followed them since the beginning, the poverty is real. They are genuine and I struggle to see how people have read the odd thing or two and are judging.
I had no experience of the benefits system until my dh was made redundant. He is an honest, hard working, keen to work (at anything!) and the Jobcentre seemed to go to great lengths to find reasons to stop his JSA payments! As for helping people actually find a job they're useless. it's all about targets.

Rocking
^Sorry about your friend but your second example makes no sense.
He was sanctioned for not applying for jobs.^

Pinkie at no point did I say he wasn't looking for work, he did everyday, just not with the job centre as the work advertised there at that time wasn't suitable, he was desperate to get back to work & went for several interviews a week, something the girl he saw in the benefits office chose to ignore

I agree that the job centre are ill equipped to deal with more educated people shall we say but that's the point, really.

Pinkie is correct that if he didn't notice his benefits not being paid that can't ultimately be anybody else's responsibility. I sympathise though.

Pinkie is correct that if he didn't notice his benefits not being paid that can't ultimately be anybody else's responsibility. I sympathise though

I do agree with that in principle & did say as much to him, though life is never that black & white is it. It was very silly of him, but he was greiving, plus he lives in a small village without a bank & isn't tech savvy enough for internet banking etc. So as much as I agree, I can see how it happened.

His complaint was upheld btw, though I don't think he pursued it further as he was back at work & works long, odd hours, plus he just wanted to put it all behind him, which is fair enough.

He did apply for a lot of jobs that were beneath his skill set & experience though. Im surprised Pinkie et al miss that with a huge pool of potential employees to choose from, you can be rejected as you are over qualified - this can & does happen a lot